Which Spanish New Year's Eve custom calls for eating one grape with each of the midnight clock's twelve chimes?

The Spanish New Year's Eve custom of eating one grape with each midnight chime is called Las doce uvas de la suerte.

The name translates as “the twelve grapes of luck.” Participants try to eat twelve grapes in time with the twelve strokes of the clock at midnight on December 31. Each grape represents one month of the coming year, and completing the ritual is traditionally associated with good fortune.

The custom is strongly linked with Madrid's Puerta del Sol, whose clock is broadcast nationally. Families and friends often prepare small packs of twelve grapes in advance because eating them quickly can be difficult. The ceremony has also spread to Spanish-speaking communities outside Spain.

A popular explanation connects the practice with a surplus grape harvest in the early twentieth century, when growers promoted grapes as a New Year's food. Historians also note that newspaper evidence shows the custom developing before the best-known commercial promotion, so the surplus story is not the whole origin.